Another random post. I sometimes practice sentence translations to see where my mind is, and I was translating a passage from a Japanese English textbook about the Sound of Music movie.

In one sentence, it read: “Maria didn’t listen to him.” which I translated as

マリアさんは、彼きかなかった。

I double checked this with one of my Japanese co-workers, and he told me to add “wo” (を）after “kare” (he) which is 彼 in Kanji. I found this curious, and it turns out that literally, you are saying:

Maria didn’t listen to (what he was saying), which makes ”him” an object, therefore you use, を、 which is for talking about an object. (e.g hon wo motte imasu ka? – do you have a book?) 本をもっていますか？

So the sentence made sense when I saw it that way. When you refer to what someone said.

In the next sentence, it read: “She taught songs to the children.” so here I realized that I woujld be using “ni” for “to the children” and the distinction between “wo” and “ni” got a little confusing. But as I mentioned before, “wo” literally points to what was being said versus to the guy in the sentence. So:

She taught songs to the children.

Kanojo wa, kodomotachi ni, utua wo oshiemashita.

彼女は、こどもたちに歌をおしえました。

But say, it read. She didn’t listen to the children. It would be:

Kanojo wa, kodomotachi wo kikanakatta.

彼女は、こどもたちをきかなかった。

So literally its She didn’t listen to what the children said. I found that pretty cool.